Unfortunately, that will always be true. Three years from now, one could be thinking, “Should I log this bug? They might already have this bug in their system.” Or, “They may already have this fixed and queued up for the next release.”
I want to say, everyone should log bugs and everyone should go to Zendesk to do it. And if anyone has the energy to do it, they absolutely should. But anyone who logs something should also just be mentally prepared for the possibility that it could be years before they fix your bug. Or they might never fix it.
Sure, but hundreds or thousands of bug reports have none of these tags. What status do they have? Did anyone look at them? Will anyone ever look at them?
Regarding the “Solved” issue on Zendesk, I have also heard that the “Solved” status can’t be changed, but I’m personally not so sure about that. This article, Managing ticket statuses, seems to indicate that at least some statuses can be edited. So maybe “Solved” could be changed.
I think changing it would definitely help. Unfortunately, that is not the only issue. I think most people assume that Zendesk is the system of record for all MSFS bugs. It is not. (SeedyL alluded to that in his post.) Zendesk is a front end for us to send our bug reports. (Note: Microsoft has their own helpdesk software for this. Why they chose to pay monthly fees to a third party when they have their in-house software is one of life’s mysteries. I personally think that every Xbox game should have a helpdesk run out of the same software with mostly-similar lifecycles for each, so that people have a consistent experience across the Xbox platform and they leverage economies of scale. But I digress.) You can imagine the amount of garbage this team must wade through every day. Bug reports like, “The 747 is completely broken!” with nothing useful in the ticket, or because they installed “Bob’s Broken 747 Mod 2021 Edition” and didn’t bother to check if the bug happened without it. The agents working the desk have the unfortunate task of wading through all of that flotsam and translating it into useful bug reports that go into the real bug tracker.
I think we all want a little more transparency, and ideally, the process we’d see would look something like this, with us being privy to the various statuses shown in the blocks:
(Doesn’t that look like fun?! I’m not saying it has to be exactly this; I’m just illustrating what could be.)
Potential problems with this are:
Something like this would have to be automated. There’s no way humans could manage this at this scale. Even for something half as complex, an integration would have to be built between the bug tracker and the front end that I doubt exists today, and that takes time and money.
This may be too much for some people. I know we’re all savvy here in the forums, but exposing this much lifecycle might overwhelm some people.
This amount of transparency might cause some people to get angry that their issue is not moving through the system. Of course, many of us are upset right now. But we’re upset while holding out hope that our bugs are making their way through the system, while in fact, most of them would probably be in the aforementioned “Waiting for Development” status. Unfortunately – and I’m not here to start any conspiracy theories – it’s probably easier to manage a group of people who don’t know where their bugs are vs. a group of people who do know where they are.
These are some of the hurdles that would need to be overcome, and before we even got to thinking about it, there would also need to be an appetite for change. For all I know, there might be internal policies that forbid this level of transparency. There’s already so much they can’t tell us because of who-knows-what reason. This kind of transparency might lead the public to notice patterns and speculate or figure out certain things about the roadmap that they want to keep secret.
But I still think a middle ground could be found for more transparency. AND, there needs to be a process for more bugs to get logged from the forums. If we’re going to have a Bug Reporting Hub category and people are encouraged to log bugs there, then it needs a full-time dedicated team to manage those bugs.
I’m not saying it has to be exactly this; I’m just illustrating what could be.)